Red and yellow and pink and green...
Painting contests are a good way of building up a folio, and they also serve as good publicity. I think I've only ever entered three, but that's about to change... almost all of my current commissions are going into competitions over the next few months. Between the Warmachine/Hordes Australian Nationals in June, a Privateer Press online contest in July, GenCon in August, and the Australian Golden Demon competition in October, I should be quite busy...
Today, I've been playing with metallics. Specifically, trying to paint plain old boring silver... in a way that's reflecting the aurora borealis. It's an interesting challenge. I've taken the sheen off the silver with some matte medium, and started building up thin glazes of colour to tint it - blues, browns, greens and purples. Once the last glaze dries I'll start building up the silver highlights again, and then I'll get to work on the rest of the model.
Over the weekend I tried (again) to learn how to use Illustrator. I don't know why, but I've never had much luck with the program - even with plenty of exposure to InDesign and Photoshop, Illustrator just doesn't seem very intuitive at all. After some spectacular failures involving attempts to trace over pencil linework, I gave up and experimented with using basic shapes to make a map. This time, things started to work out... successfully translating a sketch of Meredius into the beginnings of a detailed map. By detailed, of course, I mean that I've added about 700+ buildings to the city so far, and probably have another 400 to go. Obsessive? Me? ;) Meredius is the setting for a masquerade freeform that aeliel and I will be running at Arcanacon next year - a miniature Venice, built in the centre of an ocean. Should be fun :)
Today, I've been playing with metallics. Specifically, trying to paint plain old boring silver... in a way that's reflecting the aurora borealis. It's an interesting challenge. I've taken the sheen off the silver with some matte medium, and started building up thin glazes of colour to tint it - blues, browns, greens and purples. Once the last glaze dries I'll start building up the silver highlights again, and then I'll get to work on the rest of the model.
Over the weekend I tried (again) to learn how to use Illustrator. I don't know why, but I've never had much luck with the program - even with plenty of exposure to InDesign and Photoshop, Illustrator just doesn't seem very intuitive at all. After some spectacular failures involving attempts to trace over pencil linework, I gave up and experimented with using basic shapes to make a map. This time, things started to work out... successfully translating a sketch of Meredius into the beginnings of a detailed map. By detailed, of course, I mean that I've added about 700+ buildings to the city so far, and probably have another 400 to go. Obsessive? Me? ;) Meredius is the setting for a masquerade freeform that aeliel and I will be running at Arcanacon next year - a miniature Venice, built in the centre of an ocean. Should be fun :)